If you took all the children in Ohio who don’t have regular access to food and brought them to Columbus, you would be able to fill Ohio Stadium six times over and still have a line outside. Bruce McPheron, Ohio State’s interim executive vice president and provost, shared that factoid at the inaugural Buckeye Summit in mid-April. More than 600 researchers, students and alumni gathered in Columbus for the day-long dialogue about tackling the issue of food insecurity at home and abroad. Attendees participated in roundtable discussions and listened to presentations from keynote speakers. Additionally, 39 percent of the people

For Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J., is more than just the site of the flagship campus. It’s the school’s hometown, and the community it serves. Incoming RU freshman learned that lesson this summer before even setting foot in a lab or lecture hall for a course. Thanks to a new partnership between Rutgers Against Hunger (RAH) and Rutgers New Student Orientation, roughly 6,000 future students worked to help provide food to about 1,700 underprivileged children in New Brunswick. Over the course of two months, groups of future Scarlet Knights packed 24,000 packages of food for kids ages 6-12 taking part

When broaching the sensitive subject of healthy eating and body weight with their children, parents often feel like they’re biting off more than they can chew. To explore this subject further, a team from the University of Minnesota published a study that examines how parents talk to their adolescent children about eating and weight, and how that differs based on a household’s status as food-secure or -insecure. And that, in turn, can have some interesting downstream effects on people’s health throughout their lives. “It isn’t always easy for parents to know what to do or say,” said Dianne Neumark-Sztainer, a

During football and basketball games, BTN LiveBIG will spotlight notable examples of research, innovation and community service from around the conference. In-Game stories will provide more background on these features, and the opportunity to view the videos again. Few organizations have grown as much and as quickly as the Food Recovery Network (FRN). Founded by students at the University of Maryland in 2011, today it’s a powerhouse with a nationwide presence. “We’ve become the largest student movement against hunger in America,” said Ben Simon, co-founder and executive director of FRN. “We started about three years ago and are now at

During football and basketball games, BTN LiveBIG will spotlight notable examples of research, innovation and community service from around the conference. In-Game stories will provide more background on these features, and the opportunity to view the videos again. As described in a BTN LiveBIG story last weekend, the University of Minnesota has a long history of coming up with solutions that help feed the world. And that goes beyond scholarship in agriculture to include academics in fields that range from economics to, well, bugs. At Minnesota’s department of entomology, which is dedicated to the study of insects, professor Ian MacRae

The University of Minnesota is known for producing innovative, essential work in agriculture — a bit odd for a school that has a gopher, a notorious farm pest, as a mascot. Today, alumni, professors and students are contributing immensely to this field and, in the process, helping keep the world fed even as new problems continually emerge. “The challenges are pretty clear,” said James Bradeen, head of UMN’s department of plant pathology. “We have a growing world population, a changing climate. With that comes changes in [food] production patterns.” Fortunately, he added, Minnesota is “a place filled with people who

It’s a big challenge: make sure every single one of the 9 billion-plus people living on Earth in 2050 is well-fed and nourished. But it’s one that students attending Big Ten universities are up for, as demonstrated by the honorees in the inaugural Global Food Challenge Emerging Leaders for Food Security fellowship, sponsored and operated by Land O’Lakes Inc. Following a rigorous application process, 10 college students from across the United States were chosen late last year to take part in the program. Of those, seven were from universities in the Big Ten. Since their selection, they’ve participated in a